“What the hell,” she said.
6
The first one missed but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter because she was absolutely calm. She was always absolutely calm at times like this. She steadied the rifle against her shoulder and fired again, felt the pull again, saw the bullet miss again. She didn’t panic because there was nothing to panic about. There was nobody and nothing in the universe but herself and this rifle and Kelley Grey. All she had to do was go on firing.
7
The second one hit the back of the bench she had been sitting on when she came in, and with that Kelley knew what was happening. She was being shot at. There was somebody else in the tent with her and she was being shot at. She was supposed to be shot at, but not yet, not here, and where was Gregor Demarkian when you needed him? That was the question. That and what the hell it was she was supposed to do.
There sure as hell wasn’t anyplace she was going to be able to hide.
She whipped around and looked in the direction she thought the bullet must have come from. She could see nothing or nobody and it made her afraid. That was what she had to do. She had to bring it all out into the open.
She grabbed the metal folding chair, collapsed it into a shield and held it out in front of her, or at least what she hoped was in front of her, between herself and where she was sure the bullet must have come from.
“Come out of there,” she said, as loud as she could. “Come out of there right this minute. Amanda, for God’s sake.”
8
My name is not Amanda, Amanda Ballard thought. My name has never been Amanda. It was only supposed to be.
Kelley Grey had the metal folding chair up over her head.
Amanda knew no one could hold onto metal when the metal had been hit by a bullet.
The bullet made the metal vibrate and the metal stung.
She raised the rifle to firing height again and positioned it ever more carefully against her shoulder. She had never been able to take the kick very well and now her shoulder ached.
She fired at the metal folding chair and hit it.
She heard Kelley cry out and then the clatter of the chair falling to the ground.
She took aim and fired again.
9
“For god’s sake,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Franklin, I told you, you were supposed to leave somebody here.”
10
Gregor Demarkian was coming in from the back end of the tent. As soon as she saw him, she knew it had finally gone wrong. Getting caught didn’t make it go wrong. Only missing made it go wrong. Getting caught didn’t do anything to her at all.
She gave it one more try. She had the rifle in position. She sighted as best she could with this big man bearing down on her and pulled the trigger.
11
Gregor got his hands on the barrel of the gun just in time. He felt the barrel rock as he held it, the heat searing his hands, the bullet racing through, the redirected rifle sending sparks into the tent ceiling as the bullet crashed through and into the air. He sent up a little prayer that nobody was out there, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then heard the splintering of wood that meant the bullet had hit a tree. He let himself relax.
“Get up,” he said to Kelley Grey. “It’s over now.”
“It’s over and I’m going to sue you,” Kelley said. “What did you think you were doing? Weren’t you at least having her watched?”
“I didn’t know where she was to start having her watched from,” Franklin Morrison said, struggling into the tent himself.
A lot of other people were struggling into the tent, too, actors in costume, animal handlers looking for a nip from the bottle that floated around the dressing room most nights. Gregor saw Candy George, who played Mary, looking from Kelley to Amanda and back again in mild, but not very curious, confusion.
In the end, he turned his attention to Amanda Ballard, who was really Amy Jo Bickerel, and who now looked like nobody in particular at all. Her hair was back and he could see the ear without the earlobe clearly. It made her look not quite finished.
Other than that, she simply looked tired.